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Saturday, January 31, 2015

I’m just lucky.” “I was in the right place at the
right time.” “I’m not ready for that promotion.” According to Good Morning
America reporter Claire Shipman and BBC anchor Katty Kay, these are phrases
used almost exclusively by women when talking about their careers. In their new
book, The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance—What Women
Should Know, they explore why women lack confidence and what it means for their
careers.

Wharton management professor Adam M. Grant recently interviewed Kay about her new book when she visited
campus as a guest lecturer in the Authors@Wharton series. In this interview,
Kay discusses the research about this confidence gap, the importance of
confidence and how it can be addressed.

An edited transcript of the conversation appears
below.

AdamGrant :drove you to write this
book?

Katty Kay: [W]e wrote a book about six years
ago on the value of women in the workforce. For that book, we interviewed a lot
of senior women in business, in the military, in politics. We were struck by
phrases that they would use, phrases like, “I’m just lucky to have got where I
got to”; “I was in the right place at the right time”; or, “You know, I think
I’m not quite ready for that promotion yet.” It occurred to us that we never
heard men say things like this.

Grant: How could that be?

Kay: [I]t just struck us that something was
happening with women in the professional space that was not happening in their
home lives. When you ask them about their kids or their friends, they think
they are great. They are totally confident of their ability to make friendships
or be great mothers or supportive wives. But get them into the professional
space, and we wondered if it was just anecdotal or if there was actually data
behind this.

Grant: What led you to the initial idea that
it was a confidence gap as opposed to humility, let’s say?

“That’s what the confidence gap is. Women don’t
believe they are as good as they are.”

Kay: Because it wasn’t just words. They
weren’t saying one thing and doing another. They genuinely believed they
weren’t good enough when you start looking into all of the data. Wharton’s done
some of it. Columbia Business School has run numbers [to show] men overestimate
their abilities by some 30%, [whereas] women routinely underestimate their
abilities. We talked to a lot of psychologists who were working in business
schools who put men and women in front of scientific reasoning quizzes. The
women will routinely think they have done less well than they have done. The
men will think they have done better than they have done. In reality, they have
done about the same.

Grant: You point out that it’s not just other
women, but that as a BBC journalist, you had actually experienced this
yourself.

Kay: Oh, yeah. I’m riddled with this, and
have been for the last 30 years of my career. I spent years in America saying
that the only reason I’ve been successful in America is because I speak the way
I do. I mean, it can’t possibly be my talents, right? Or my ability or my hard
work. That’s preposterous. It had to be some external factor. In my case, it
was the fact that I speak with a British accent, which makes people think I’m
smarter than I am. I actually believed this, Adam. For years I believed this.
Claire [Shipman], my co-author, will tell you. She has been banging on about
this one for years.

Claire thinks [she] became CNN’s Moscow
correspondent because she happened to be in the right place. That is very
common for women.

Grant: What did you do when you noticed that
there were people with British accents here who weren’t successful? Because
that would violate the theory at some level.

Sponsored Content:

Kay: You always find some reason they must
have some problem.

Grant: OK, so, you identified the gap.

Kay: No one’s ever asked me that before.

Grant: Good. There is a lot of data behind
the confidence gap, right? What do we do about it? Where does it come from, and
how do we start to solve the problem?

Kay: Well, it led us then on this rather
tangential quest to find out what confidence is. We thought that if we were
going to try and grow confidence, we were better off if we knew what we were
dealing with. So, we interviewed dozens of neurologists and psychologists for
the book. We would always start off with this simple question, “Can you define
confidence for us?” Inevitably, we would be met by a pause: “Hmm … well, it’s
complicated.”

We went into this with a couple of misconceptions.
First of all, we thought that confidence was the same as self-esteem — a
general feeling that you’re a valuable person. I have high self-esteem. I think
I’m a valuable person, the universe is a friendly place. It’s an almost sort of
moral emotional quality that is pervasive to who you are as a human
being.

“Richard Petty, who is a psychologist at Ohio State,
… said to us that he thought the best definition of confidence was this:
‘Confidence is the stuff that turns thoughts into action.’”

We were wrong. Confidence is not the same as
self-esteem. We also thought — and this was wrong, too — that confidence is a
manner, a mannerism, it’s a bravado, a sense of swagger. It’s that thing of
dominating meetings or speaking loudest and longest. We were wrong [there] as
well. We would ask all these neurologists
and psychologists, “What is confidence?” Finally, it was Richard Petty, who is
a psychologist at Ohio State, who said to us that he thought the best
definition of confidence was this: “Confidence is the stuff that turns thoughts
into action,” which is beautifully simple. The great thing about that idea is
that not only does it turn thoughts into action — “I want to introduce myself
to that interesting-looking person at a party, but I feel nervous about doing
so” — confidence gets you across the room to shake somebody’s hand and
introduce yourself.

When you do it, when you take the action, you grow
your confidence. So, it’s a wonderfully virtuous circle. Confidence is about
action.

Grant: Even when you take the action
ineffectively, though? So, you make the introduction. It’s a complete disaster.
What happens then?

Kay: Yes. Even if you fail, even if you meet
hurdles when you try something new. It’s inevitable, right? You’re always going
to meet hurdles. You introduce yourself to that person, they brush you off.
Think to yourself: “What’s the worst that’s happened? Did the sky fall on your
head? Did the earth open up and swallow you whole because that person brushed
you off?” No, you’re still standing. You’re still there. And in a sense, even
if you fail, you’ve learned that you can take a risk, try something hard, even
if you fail, you’re still there.

Now, if you keep doing that, eventually you’ll
succeed. If you introduce yourself to the next person, the chances are pretty
slim that they are going to brush you off as well. You’ve learned that you can
do something and that your world doesn’t fall apart because you try something
that’s outside your comfort zone.

I read the news every night to millions of people
around the world. It doesn’t test my confidence. Working at Wharton would
terrify me. I’m absolutely convinced I would be useless at doing what you do.
The only way I would ever find out would be to try. That’s how you build
confidence. You take something that is challenging to you, that seems
difficult, that is new and hard and outside your comfort zone — a small thing
or a big thing — and you keep going, overcome hurdles and you succeed to some
degree. And that’s how you build confidence.

Grant: It’s an interesting counterpoint to
the self-esteem movement, which we all know from mountains of evidence did
almost no good and a lot of harm. This is different, right? This isn’t about
looking in the mirror and saying, “I’m really great.” It’s actually about
increasing your ability to, as you said, convert thoughts into action. Do you
have any other favorite strategies for boosting confidence?

“You take something that is challenging to you, that
seems difficult … and you keep going, overcome hurdles and you succeed to some
degree. And that’s how you build confidence.”

Kay: One of the reasons that there’s a
confidence gap between men and women is women often find action harder than men
because we are more risk-averse, because the fear of failure is enormous for
us. It seems to be bigger than it is for men.

The other thing that women do is we think a lot. We bounce
around inside our own heads. “I sent Adam that email. He didn’t get back to me
after half an hour. Maybe he’s mad at me…. Maybe all of Wharton is mad at me.
Maybe everyone at Penn is mad at me because I didn’t get back to them.” That’s
the way women work. We extrapolate — we take one small thing — a small slight,
a small criticism, a small thing we’ve done wrong and it holds us back from
acting and trying hard things because we’re running around in our own heads.

One of the things we [suggest] in The Confidence
Code is you have to think less. You actually have to draw a line under
those thoughts. Women dwell on the things they have done wrong. It’s what
happens in review processes. It’s what happens in negotiations with our bosses.
And what happens when there’s one piece of work we didn’t manage to hand in on
time that day, even though we’ve done five other good pieces of work; we’ll remember
the one piece of work we didn’t do so well. We need to find a way to draw a red
line under that.

Grant: It’s interesting though, because
everything you say, to me it sounds like a list of desirable attributes. So,
isn’t a possible solution here just to get men down to the level of reasonable
confidence?

Kay: [W]e’re asked, “Well, aren’t we at risk
of pushing women into overconfidence?” I don’t think we’re at any risk of
pushing women into overconfidence. I see no evidence that we’re going to
suddenly become Lehman Brothers redux — all of us. I just don’t think that’s
going to happen.

Ideally, everyone needs a little bit of
overconfidence. It’s interesting that psychologists disagree about most things,
but the one thing they actually do agree about is that a little bit of
overconfidence is better than a little bit of under-confidence. Men probably
have too much. And it might be better for all of us if some of it came down,
particularly if you’re thinking of a cultural environment in the office space,
right? If you’re thinking of meeting environments or employee/employer
relations. That is, to some extent, a mannerism.

“Get over the fear of failure — that techie buzz
phrase ‘fail fast’ is a great one for women. Women hold themselves to a very
high standard.”

But I think the priority is to get women over this
hump of under-confidence because that’s part of what’s stopping them from
taking action and getting to the next level.

Grant: So, you’ve talked a little bit about
people stretching outside of their comfort zones. If you were going to create
your wish list of a couple of steps that women and also men lacking confidence
ought to take, what else would go on that list?

Kay: Be prepared to fail. Get over the fear
of failure — that techie buzz phrase “fail fast” is a great one for women.
Women hold themselves to a very high standard. We know this. Women are 25% more
prone to perfectionism than men are. We’re perfectionists at work. We’re
perfectionists as wives. We’re perfectionists as mothers. We’re perfectionists
in the yoga studio. You name it, we want to be perfect at it. If you’re going
to try and be perfect, you’re never going to get there. It’s an impossible
standard, right? No one is ever going to be perfect.

But the pursuit of perfection is something that
holds us back from taking risks because it makes us very scared of failing. One
of the first things that people who are under-confident need to do is give up
trying to be perfect. It will be the single biggest thing that they can do to
help them take risks and be prepared to fail.

Grant: In closing, is there a point that you
feel has been misunderstood or oversimplified that you want to set the record
straight on?

Kay: Yes. Some people have said to us, “Well,
aren’t we just trying to make women like men?” We wrestled with this when we
were writing the book. Basically, do you have to be a jerk to be confident?
Because I think a lot of women look around them, and they see a very male model
of confidence in the professional space that frankly is unappealing and
inaccessible to us because it’s downright foreign.

It was Christine Lagarde, the head of the
[International Monetary Fund], who was really helpful to us in explaining this.
She said it’s essential for women to be authentic. Don’t give up the very
qualities that make you valuable — an ability to listen, ability to build
consensus, a high EQ that’s good at reading a room, warmth. Warmth is an
amazing quality to have. It’s a very powerful quality. Don’t give up all of
that in the pursuit of a mannerism — bravado and swagger — which doesn’t really
suit you, and when you try it, doesn’t work for you anyway.

You want to be confident in that you want your voice
to be heard. You don’t want to apologize. You don’t, as Sheryl Sandberg says,
want to lean back. But you want to do it in a way that is authentic to whom you
are as a woman. That’s critical. We’re not asking people to become somebody
different. We are just asking them to bring their perception of their abilities
in line with their abilities. When you’re there, you’re in the sweet spot.

She may have only been 11 years old at
the time, but the young and driven TSwift struggled at first to find a record
label in Nashville, Tennessee, that would sign her. During a middle school
spring break, she took ademo CD of her singing
karaoke coversof country stars
Dolly Parton, the Dixie Chicks and LeAnn Rimes to Music Row and handed copies
to as many music label receptionists as she could, but said she wasn't signed
because "everyone in that town
wanted to do what I wanted to do." She clearly found her niche,
though -- this musical princess has since learned how to play quite a few
instruments, taken over the country and pop-rock scene, andopenly defiedone the most popular
music streaming companies.

Stephen King

This wildly successful American author
of all things horror and suspense almost didn't get his big break -- 30 times!
It was with his wife Tabby's help that he wasfinally able to
convince Doubleday to publish Carrie. He has since become
the 19th best-selling author of all time.

Harland David Sanders

Our favorite colonel from Kentucky
Fried Chicken sure had to fight the good fight to get his secret recipe into
the restaurant world. He wasrejected a whopping 1,009 timesbefore he finally got
that fried chicken to taste just right. Talk about perseverance.

Charles Schultz

The famous cartoonist who brought the
world the "Peanuts" comic strip experienced quite a bit of rejection
early in his career. None of the cartoon drawings he designed for his high
school yearbook were ever selected to be published, and later Walt Disney
turned him down for a job. It looks like it's a good thing he believed that
"you can't create humor
out of happiness."

Elvis Presley

Before the King of Rock 'n' Roll hit it
big, he was told by the Grand Ole Opry manager in Nashville that he would bebetter off going back
to his job as a truck driverthan pursuing a
career in music. Elvis many have never returned to that venue for another
concert, but it's obvious he didn't have to go back to prove Jim Denny wrong.

J.K. Rowling

Before J.K. Rowling hit it big withHarry
Potter,
she was a broke, divorced single mother struggling to get by on welfare. In a
matter of five years, the series took off, leading her to become thefirst billionaire
author

We tend to move through life so fast
that it all fades into a blurry mess.
show you how to use the right combination of apps and gadgets to keep
everything digitally backed up and more importantly, in a way that is easily
retrievable at a later date

GADGETS

HTC RE

Rs 9,990 You want a wearable camera
to be really light and unobtrusive. At the same time, it should capture what
you need without much fuss. The wide angle lens and smartphone control on the
HTC RE helps you do all that.Plus, its waterproof, looks unique and captures
high quality 1080p video and photos with just a couple of taps. If cheap,
no-nonsense, high quality audiovideo is what you need, the HTC RE is hard to
beat.

Narrative Clip

Rs 9,500 (including shipping) When
you start taking photographs of an event, you sort of detach from it. Well,
that's what the makers of the Narrative Clip would have you believe. The Clip
is a tiny (20 grams, 9mm thick) automatic camera with storage for 4,000
pictures (5MP each) and 2 day battery life. Clip it to any part of your
clothing and it'll keep taking photos of everything you see and everything
you're part of. The AndroidiOS app will let you view and sort everything later.

Samsung Note Series

Rs 23,900 onwards Thanks to the
pressure sensitive stylus, Samsung's Note series of devices are the perfect
choice of phonetablet for someone who constantly needs to draw, jot notes or
annotate. You can take a photo of anything and start drawing on it, scribble
notes, save clips and images to combine later, take a screenshot and start
drawing etc.The cheapest in the series is the Note 3 Neo and the newest is the
Galaxy Note Edge with a curved amoled screen.

Portronics Portable Scanners

Rs 4,990 onwards If you often see
something you need to save (reference books in a library, for instance), you
can use a portable scanner. Portronics offers two versions that are truly
portable ­ they have built in batteries and record to a micro SD card. Scanny 6
is great for books and almost any flat surface ­ even a poster on a wall ­ you
have to manually move it across the surface you want to scan. Scanny 7 is a
portable auto sheetfed scanner and it works for leaflets, papers, business
cards and so on (up to A4).

Portronics ElectroPen

Rs 5,500 The ElectroPen converts any
regular notepad into a digital one. There are two parts to it: the receiver (8
hour battery life with continuous use) and a digital pen (30 hours continuous
use). You simply clip the receiver to a book or notepad and it will digitize
everything you write. It can store 100 A4 pages before you need to transfer to
a computer. As a bonus, it can also be used as a writing device or mouse with
the receiver connected to a PC.

Boogie Board RIP

Rs 5,990 Ever thought of a million
dollar idea, only to have lost it in a scribble somewhere? This is a device
that lets you save all your scribbles ­ the screen lets you doodle or write
anything you want and each page can be saved to the internal memory to be
transferred to the computer later as a PDF. Tap one button and the screen will
flash, erase and you can start again. The rechargeable battery typically lasts
a week or so.

Google Location History:

Many Android users seem to be
unaware that Android, by default, records a daily location and timestamp. All
this data is accessible to you at any time via a personalized map from your
Google account. Head to http:maps.google.comlocationhistory to view your
movement details on a personalized map. This is only visible to you (or to
anyone else who has your password). If you want to share this info, you can
export the travel data to a KML file that can be viewed using Google Maps or
Google Earth.

With the new year, many people might see it as a time to move forward by improving their
relationships, both professional and romantic. It's a good time to hit the
reset button and take that step towards resolving past conflict. Crucial to
accomplishing this is to make amends and issue an apology for wrongdoings. As a
psychotherapist and executive coach, I help clients who get into trouble --
whether with their spouse or the public. There's a right way to issue an
apology, and of course, a wrong way. There are certain elements that should be part of an
apology, and there are things that should not be said.

Here's how to issue a proper apology, whether you're a partner
or spouse, celebrity, or business leader, who made a mistake:

·Own it.Verbalize
what you did wrong and do it in person. This shows some level of culpability
and awareness.

·Don't make excuses.Don't
try to explain away why you said or did something wrong. If you cheated, don't
say, "I was drunk and that's why it happened." Instead, be direct and
say what happened.

·Keep it simple.Celebrities
and public figures so often say too much and end up getting into more trouble.
Their rant is usually an attempt to rationalize the behavior and that isn't
what the public needs at the moment. Celebrity or not, obfuscating your words
will dilute your intended message.

·Be specific.Clearly
identify what it is you are apologizing for. Saying, "I am sorry for
making the comment about you being messy" is clear and direct. This goes
much further than saying, "I'm sorry that you were upset."

·Make it heartfelt.Speak
from the heart and don't be afraid to show genuine emotion. This is your first
step in repentance. This will go a long way in humanizing you and showing
sincerity, both of which are critical in winning back trust and respect.

·Put yourself in the shoes
of the person you hurt.What do you think that
person experienced and felt emotionally? Was it hurt? Sadness? Anxiety? Fear?
Try to understand what the person or group might be going through and identify
it. Be empathetic. For example, "I understand how my comments may have
hurt you and made you feel anxious and disrespected."

·What could you have done
differently?Express how you could have handled the situation in a healthier
way. So for the spouse who yells at his significant other when upset he might
say "I should have taken a time out and then when I felt calmer expressed
my frustrations."

·Take action. Indicate
what is next. What actions are you taking to try to improve things? For
instance, if you have a tendency to blow up at your spouse, then perhaps
therapy that addresses anger and communication is in order.

Next time you're in a position to apologize, do it the right way
even though it might be difficult. The gain far outweighs any anxiety you may
have over saying, "I am sorry."

They've breathed life into offbeat
ideas and claim their ventures are unique and face little if no competition.
But that's still no guarantee of success

It's ingenious but, er, does it make
money? Perhaps all the entrepreneurs who feature in this special package would
have been asked this question at some point in their startup journey.

Kalyani Khona, who has started up
Wanted Umbrella, which she claims is India's only matrimonial agency for
differently-abled people, may have had observers wondering where the money will
come from. Her quick answer: “I have married a social cause and business.“

Ask her about who are the potential
customers and she just might tell you about the good lady who placed an order
in New Delhi for her grandson's first birthday and carried it to Jaipur.

It's ingenious, but will it fly?
That's what Mrinal Pai must be asking himself on the odd bad day. His start up
is a farsighted concept that offers custom drone products and services. Pai
sees a (near) future when drones will be used to transport organs between hospitals,
flying over gridlocked roads; and when you could use his service to drop a
quick personalised note of endearment to your beloved. Yes, but will
regulations -which have yet to be framed -allow his drones to keep flying?
These are just three of the 10 offbeat startups we've deep-dived into; just
three of the 800-odd startups added every year; and just three of the over
3,000 startups that are trying to make it big in India.

The 10 that we've picked are novel,
but being different or a first mover is no guarantee of being the best mover
-or moving at all a few years later. After all, success rates in the world of
entrepreneurship are notoriously low, as low as 10% in the tech world. And
funding is no guarantee of success. CB Insights, a US-based venture capital
database, reckons that companies typically die around 20 months after their
last round of funding and after having raised $1.3 million.

For the 10 featured over the next couple
of blogs, being unique is a good starting point. But as Sanjeev Krishnan,
partner and leader (private equity and transaction services) at
PricewaterhouseCoopers, explains, the markets for many such differentiated
offerings are not large enough. “So unless the market expands exponentially, a
shift in focus would be essential to create a new market segment,“ he points
out.

There's something else that may work
in favour of these newbie risk-takers: the proverbial fire in their bellies.
When you hear Nikunj Jain, co-founder of Frankly.me, talking about being
“Darwin's children“ and that “we run faster and kill harder“, you will get a
sense of the fire burning.

1.King
of Drones

You could call him `drone-acharya',
although Mrinal Pai is a guru in a field a bit different from military arts.
The 22-year-old lad from Kerala believes that one day Indians will be able to
outsource petty jobs to machines. “And if that happens, moms won't be heard
saying: `beta zara doodh leke aana' [son, please buy milk] as drones will get
it.“ Pai is the co-founder of Skylark Drones,
a Bengaluru-based startup that offers custom drone products and services
ranging from aerial views for real estate developers to 3D surface model data
for land surveys to wedding shoots and banner advertisements, and keeping a
close eye during sports and other events.

Started in July 2014 with a seed
capital of `4 lakh, Pai now wants to scale up the use of drones in areas such
as organ transportation between hospitals in a city to bypass crowded roads.

Aware that the market for drones is
still nascent, Pai believes that first-mover advantage will help his startup.
“The biggest challenge for us now is not money or technology. It's regulation,“
he contends. Not even a year old, Skylark, says Pai, has broken even. And he's
keen to break through potential barriers to the growth of his firm. “Brick
walls are there to stop people who don't want it badly enough,“ he says. Pai
for sure wants it bad, and wants it now -and he's got his drones to bypass the
walls!

2.Not
Quite Kid Stuff

Deepa Kumar

Last July, when violent protests
erupted across Bengaluru over the sexual abuse of a six-year-old student in her
school, Deepa Ku mar refused to hit the streets. Reason: she was getting ready
to fight back in her own unique way.

“The only way to curb such abuse is
by talking about the topic with our kids,“ says Kumar. “We have to get rid of
the devil in our heads.“ Kumar did that with HowToTellYourChild,
an online startup that offers videos, books and related products that parents
and educators can use to teach children about topics like sexual abuse and
puberty in a fun and easy manner. Started in November last year, HowTo
TellYourChild plans to tie up with schools, hold counselling sessions with
parents and make videos in regional languages to expand its reach.

According to a study by the ministry
of women and child development in 2007, every second child is a victim of some
form of sexual abuse. The problem is enormous but so is the opportunity.

“This is a serious subject and we
are the only ones doing it,“ says Kumar who insists that How To Tell Your Child
is a perfectly viable business model. As she readies to tell a story to kids,
there's another audience that would be keen to listen in too -investors.

3.Don't
Hold your Breath

Kaushal Sanghavi knew that his
business was unusual but little did he realise that customer acquisition can
happen in the strangest of cir cumstances. A few months back when a hearing at
the Bombay high court got delayed by three hours, it made a couple of women
professionals restless. They wanted to use the toilet but it wasn't quite,
well, swachh. So, they booked one of Sanghavi's `breathing rooms' to use the
loo and, whilst they were there, they also decided to work out of it for a
while.

BreathingRoom provides on-demand hourly workplaces to professionals and
business travellers for meetings and conferences. The rooms can be booked from
a mobile app even 15 minutes prior to a meeting.

The idea is indeed unique -offering
unutilised or underutilised commercial spaces in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and
Pune at an affordable cost. The startup soon plans to expand into other cities
such as Hyderabad and Chennai and is scouting for investors. Sanghavi is also
rolling out OpenSpaces -in bars, restaurants and cafes -from which users can
work for free when they're less busy.

Started in October last year by two
ex-Amazonians, Sanghavi and Jacky Chow, BreathingRoom is now used by a wide
range of clients such as startup founders, financial and tax consultants, and
marketing and sales professionals to name a few. The rate charged per hour
-`400 -is so reasonable that even work-fromhome entrepreneurs are opting for
it, claims Sanghavi. The startup makes money by pocketing a 30% commission, the
rest going to the property owner.

Whilst co-working hubs are
mushrooming, the BreathingRoom model of tying up with owners of under-utilised
spaces is still an untapped opportunity.And Sanghavi is not cramped for space
-not yet.

4.Filling
the Bill

When he was a PR executive at Lowe
Lintas, Bharat Ahirwar would find it impossible to take a break. A day away
from the office would be swallowed up by the time spent on bill payments
(electricity, mobile et al), fixing leaky taps, a trip to the municipality
office and bank-related chores. That's when it struck Ahirwar that there would
be many working professionals like him in a similar predicament. Result? A
Eureka moment that culminated in the setting up of errand-running startup GetMyPeon.

Started in July 2012, GetMyPeon is a
newage version of a courier and concierge service, offering services ranging
from the routine bill payments to the downright bizarre delivery of vada pavs
from a specific food stall to a client waiting at the airport; or handing over
just a button from a distant suburb that a stylist needed at her studio in
South Mumbai.

“Our service is niche. We provide
hyperlocal solutions and cater to urgent needs of customers,“ says Ahirwar, who
is busy beefing up his team, developing an app to improve user experience and
planning to roll into other cities.And, yes, funding is definitely on the
cards.

With startups like YourGuy
Concierge, Timesaverz and Grofers offering many services that overlap with
GetMyPeon, Ahirwar will have to constantly innovate to stand out.“Our stable
growth is proof that we will survive and thrive.“

5.On
the Scent of a Bounty

Why would anybody shun a tall, good
looking man who is always nicely dressed in jeans, tees and leather shoes in
college? This is what Karan Vij, who got enrolled in California University to
study international eco nomics, couldn't fathom.

He got the answer from an Indian
friend: “Stupid, it's your shoes. They're so formal and intimidating.“ The
learning helped Vij in setting up his business after coming back to India in
2012.From formal, he was keen to leap to the other extreme -he wanted to be
funky. So he started Scentra, a scented shoe
brand that uses organic cotton to make footwear, designed in California and
manufactured in Spain. And, yes, imported to India.

“It's India's first scented shoe
brand,“ claims Vij. The scent is not sprayed on the shoe but it's dyed in the
sole to make it last long.

And if you thought that only women
would rush to buy the prod uct, 43% of Scentra's customers are men, lets on
Vij. Having sold over 1,300 pairs over the past five months, he is now
targeting to sell 100 pairs every day, at an average of `2,000 a pop.

Possible? “Absolutely as the market
is huge and we are the only player,“ he says. There's another reason for his
confidence -the insight that he got from girls. “The first thing they look at
in a guy is the shoes.“ Now he's got to get more men to believe that.

Friday, January 30, 2015

In
order to scale your business to the next level, you may need to rethink your
approach.

Once you get
your company up and running, you may find that it is difficult to scale your
business based on your original product, service or pricing model. In order to
break free, you must find ways to support and augment your existing business
with other revenue streams and rethink your overall approach to selling.

Step
1- Think About Value You Are Delivering, Not the Hours

A common
mistake I see in working with companies that are struggling to grow is that
they are not charging enough for what they do.

Instead of
determining your prices based on inputs, your pricing should take into account availability and
value. As you get better at providing your product or service, you will deliver
it faster and with greater accuracy. This efficiency is not a reason to offer a
lower price--in fact, it may be a reason to increase your prices.

You only
need to look at what lawyers and plumbers charge for their services to
understand this model. They build in an opportunity cost for their availability
and specialized training. Make sure you allow for margin in what you sell to
bring on new staff and train them. If you are only ever covering your costs,
you will never have the money you need to grow.

Step
2--Find Ways to Cut Costs

Just as
important as making sure you are charging enough is to determine a way to cut
the costs of what you are producing. If your company is "renting" any
part of what it takes to deliver your product or service, see if it makes sense
to own that part or if you can strike a better deal when your volume grows.

Step
3--Create Packages or Levels

Turning your
products or services into packages or levels with an easy way to upgrade
accomplishes two important goals.

In the
explanation of the packages, your customer 1) gets a better idea of all of the
work you are providing at their current level which can sometimes be lost over
time and 2) they gain an understanding of what is available at other levels.
This transparency allows your customer to determine when it might be time to
move up to a higher level of service and it reduces the sales cycles necessary
to build that awareness.

Step
4--Create Recurring Revenue

If you are
constantly worried about how to pay the bills every month because what you
produce must be sold each time, you will never be in a good position to move
your company ahead. The only way to address this problem is to create recurring
revenue.

If you think
your business can't accomplish this goal because of what you sell, you only
need to look at emerging business models like Dollar Shave Club to think about how a recurring revenue
approach might work for your business.

Dollar Shave
Club has created a recurring business model by providing men's shaving supplies
on a subscription basis. This "supplies on demand" is a growing trend
that will dramatically impact how we all shop for and receive products in the
future. The approach provides Dollar Shave Club with a predictable revenue
stream each month that allows them to concentrate on growing their business.

Step
5--Establish Key Business Partnerships

One of the
best ways to grow your business is to establish a set of relationships with
other companies that can sell your products or services for you.

Crystal, a provider of network management systems for media and satellite, uses
a network of oversea partners to establish and grow their worldwide presence. One
of the hardest things to figure out about any growing business is how to create
reach. Crystal has addressed this problem by extending their reach to untapped
markets without the overhead of new facilities or expensive headcount.

As you move
into the new year, think about your business differently in order to find
simple ways to create explosive growth.

When
it comes to accomplishing your dreams -- and getting credit for doing so -- all
we can say is, never underestimate the power of time. Time not only grants you
the ability to use your talents, pursue your dreams and leave a lasting imprint
on the world, but also gives others room to adjust their perceptions of your
achievements. Success and failure are not absolute measures of one's life, but
rather the opposite ends of a spectrum that is constantly in flux. Current
perceptions are only as valid as you allow them to be.

Thomas Edison

An inventor known
for his many failures long before his successes, Thomas Edison was even
told that he was "too
stupid to learn anything" by one of his teachers early on in
life. Yet everyone knows the name of the man responsible for inventing the
lightbulb -- even if it took him 1,001 attempts to get it right. His
perseverance with this particular invention clearly embodies his positive
saying, “I
have not failed 10,000 times -- I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will
not work."

Walt Disney

Even the head of the world's largest
animation empire hit a rough patch. In 1919 he was fired from the Kansas City
Star because he "lacked
imagination and had no good ideas," according to his editor.

The Beatles

When The Beatles auditioned for Decca Records
in 1962, Dick Rowe told their manager Brian Epstein, "Guitar
groups are on their way out." Despite that dismissal, the English
rock band went on to become one of the most influential groups of all time.

Herman Melville

In the author's lifetime, Moby Dick was
not considered a masterpiece. After publishing the novel, Melville struggled
financially for the rest of his life. He used much of his savings to publish
his subsequent novelPierre, which also was not well-received. At
the time of his death in 1891, he was a customs
inspector at a ship dock in New York.

Soichiro Honda

When Honda, an engineer for whom the popular
car company is named, first failed
to get a job with now-competitor Toyota, he took to making
scooters in his own garage. Little did the world know that this time of
unemployment would lead him to create the billion-dollar business we recognize
today.

Vincent van Gogh

His paintings may be worth millions today,
but no one really gave them a second thought during van Gogh's lifetime. In
fact, he managed to create almost 900 paintings in a span of 10 years, yet he only lived to see a single one
sold (which
went to a friend at a very low price).